


remember what has been done

by todreaminscarlet



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Post-Voyage of the Dawn Treader, a conversation, book!canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-14 22:27:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7193375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/todreaminscarlet/pseuds/todreaminscarlet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's different now, Eustace finds. Narnia seeps into his bones and soul and twines itself around his heart and lungs until there is no choice but to remember it, and yet this integral part of his being is not so easily understood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	remember what has been done

“Why did you forgive me so swiftly?” he asks Edmund one night when they are sitting outside, fingers curled into sleeves, just dark clouds above them and cool winds around them. “Why would you forgive me?”

 

Edmund breathes in the chilled air and exhales in a long, measured breath, watches as it curls around them like smoke from a burning cigarette. His breath heats up the air in front of him for just a long second before it fades away into the night.

 

“There was a boy once,” he says quietly, his voice steady and slow, “who was a bit of right old bully. It was fun for him and a relief to make someone else mad. And once, someone promised him everything that he hadn’t had and wanted, and so he lied and gave away everything that mattered.”

 

“What did the boy do then?” Eustace asks, his arms pulling his knees to his chest.

 

Edmund’s lips twist into a smile that never reaches his eyes. “Nothing,” he answers.

 

They sit in silence for a long moment, both thinking, Eustace wondering and Edmund a universe away.

 

“I know,” Eustace says, “that you said I was an ass and that you were a traitor, and that’s all you said, but,” he breaks off for two seconds, five. “I was an _ass_.”

 

Eustace turns so that he can see Edmund more clearly, but Edmund keeps staring straight out into the dark. He smiles a little at Eustace’s emphatic statement, but his eyes are shadowed and grieved. “I did everything wrong,” he says simply.

 

“You were just a kid though,” Eustace says, but Edmund shakes his head.

 

“Doesn’t matter. You were too. We were both kids, but our decisions were our own.”

 

Eustace lapses into uncomfortable silence, and Edmund can tell that he is trying to find the words for his next question so he waits patiently for Eustace to gather his thoughts.

 

“You told me that Aslan saved you and Narnia,” Eustace states.

 

Edmund shifts on the cold stoop and looks up at the few stars peeking through the smoggy, cloudy night. “Yes,” he says and breathes. “He did. I was a traitor, and I was meant to be the White Witch’s prize, and she would’ve killed me for it.”

 

Eustace sucks in a deep breath and watches as Edmund continues to speak, his face composed and eyes sad and his fingers immobile on the ground. “But Aslan went instead of me, so I wouldn’t have to die and so that Narnia could have her ‘prophesied four.’ And that was that. They were told not to speak of it again.

 

“That’s the funny thing though,” he says after a moment. “You don’t think of yourself as a traitor after you’ve seen Him, you know that,” and he pauses, “everything’s just _alright_. But still, you _know_ and even if they never say it, you know what you did, and you don’t _want_ to forget it, ‘cause if you do, then what was the point of it all.”

 

Eustace looks over at Edmund, at the face of teenager and the eyes of a man, and thinks, not for the first time with his cousins, that he feels so much younger. Edmund still stares off into the misty night with unfocused eyes like he is seeing so many things that Eustace will never know. He envies Edmund his poise sometimes, his ability to stand and _be different_ , to be more than a school boy; he wishes he possessed Edmund’s talent to know when to wait and when to speak, and his gift of always speaking with confidence and wit and wisdom. There aren’t cracks in his armor, just patience and age and the well-worn weight of responsibility and sacrifice and heavy blades and green grass and inky quills.

 

Edmund sits up straighter then and reaches up to run his fingers through his hair and a few stray locks fall back over his forehead. The boys are seated close together and from this intimate proximity, Eustace can see Edmund’s hand lightly shaking as he brushes his fingers through his hair, and he watches as Edmund gently clenches his fingers in a fist and then opens them again. Eustace looks back up at Edmund’s face and it’s heavy and tired and the lines are deep, and it is suddenly not hard to imagine a much older man with a heavy load on his shoulders, a burden that is perhaps not quite so well-carried as he might have assumed. Edmund closes his eyes then, briefly, breathes again, lost in some memory or emotion that feels too weighty for Eustace to completely comprehend.

 

But he thinks back to an ocean and a ship and a notebook full of angry petulance and a golden bracelet that shined so brightly and then so tortuously, and he thinks he might understand.

 

“I wasn’t just an ass,” he says, and the admission feels like a new weight has been lifted (or maybe just accepted onto shoulders that don’t feel quite so young).

 

Edmund’s lips quirk at the corners and he finally turns to look Eustace in the face. He leans back and stares, and Eustace briefly wants to turn away from the knowing, assessing look in his cousin’s eyes. “No,” he says, “perhaps not,” and says nothing more. His eyes seem to see more than Eustace would’ve anticipated but Eustace doesn’t shrug away, just matches Edmund’s steady eyes beat for beat until Edmund nods like he’s found something and looks away. Eustace’s shoulders slump down and he looks away from his cousin (and wonders what Edmund saw, what questions he asked).

 

They lapse into silence again, and Eustace debates leaving Edmund to think in peace, but Edmund hasn’t left yet and Eustace assumes that he would if he were annoyed with Eustace’s curiosity, so he asks, “why does Lucy see Aslan most of all?”

 

Edmund laughs then, his voice rough and uneven, and shakes his head, “Ask the impossible questions, why don’t you, Eustace?” but he bites his lip and Eustace can tell he doesn’t mean it. “I suppose,” he continues, “it’s because she believes the best out of all of us. She expects that he’s out there somewhere and she’ll see him, so when he _is_ there then,” and he pauses, “she _does_.”

 

“Do you miss it?” Eustace asks, and he’s not sure what _it_ is really, but it doesn’t matter, because Edmund’s response comes quicker than anything else he’s answered all night.

 

“Yes,” he says, and Eustace still doesn’t know what _it_ even is and he doesn’t need to somehow, because when he looks at Edmund, at his clenched fists, at the pressed lips and shadowed eyes, at Edmund’s too-youthful face, he thinks it doesn’t matter. Edmund would say _yes_ to all of it, any of it.

 

Eustace has seventeen more questions, burning curiosity about Narnia and the Golden Age and their kingship and queenship and everything in between, but he pauses and looks over at Edmund. He’s still on the ground, waiting patiently, but his eyes are terribly sad and indefinably lonely (a man out of time, out of place, Eustace thinks), and so he rises off the ground, presses his hand to Edmund’s shoulder briefly, whispers _thank you_ , and goes back inside.

 

He closes the door behind him, the warmth of the house welcoming him back and yet he still feels cold.

 

Somehow he forgets that this is the end for Edmund, the end of years and months of service, of companionship, of battles nobly fought and laws justly made. He thinks about his old friend Reepicheep and Caspian and the rest of the crew and how he misses them, and he wonders just for a second what it must be like for Edmund, and he finds he cannot imagine it.

 

He goes upstairs to his room and looks out the window and sees Edmund down on the stoop below. Edmund’s face is hidden in the dark, but Eustace can see his still shoulders and watches as Edmund braces an elbow on a knee and lowers his forehead to rest in the palm of his hand. His body doesn’t move, just stays motionless in the black of the evening night as Eustace finally pulls the curtains closed across the window and moves away.

 

**Author's Note:**

> just a moment between two found boys. 
> 
> please let me know what you thought, and come talk to me on tumblr @adaperturamlibri!!!


End file.
